In the fall of 1999, Jeff True found himself in an unexpected position: Just two years out of law school, he was serving as the interim general counsel for a newly public company, Informatica Corp.
True had never worked at a firm — a few summer stints in private practice were enough to steer him from that route. Soon enough Informatica brought in a more senior lawyer as general counsel. And True stuck around until 2005, when he jumped at the opportunity to be the GC at broadband products company 2Wire. When 2Wire was acquired by Pace in 2010, True could have done any number of things. But he headed to Palo Alto Networks, on the cusp of its public offering, to build a legal department from scratch.
